Nobody likes Reince Priebus. The names of candidates for his replacement as chief of staff are bandied about openly, his boss doesn’t respect him as a peer, and he’s temperamentally ill-suited for the demands of the position. The only reason he still comes into work every day is…

There are few takers for what might be an unworkable gig. He stays in the office until late at night and often toils away on the weekend with little control of what ultimately happens.

Redneck Revolt is just one among a handful of left-wing groups that have pledged to resist emboldened white supremacists and right-wing extremists through “direct action” that sometimes goes beyond nonviolent protest—including picking up arms. Some see themselves as the heirs of ’60s radicals like the Black Panthers, while others look to the antifa movement for inspiration.

In any crowd of far-right agitators, there’s probably a few who call themselves National Socialists or Klansmen—especially since David Duke has become a Twitter maven. But more prominent online and at the “Free Speech” rallies rippling across the United States are newer “identitarian” groups led by younger men. Identitarians claim allegiance to an ideology that originated in France and calls for an end to multiculturalism, as well as unity among people (and nation-states) of the same ethnic backgrounds. In practice, that looks a lot like racism and xenophobia, but hey, semantics.

With someone like this barging into your consciousness every hour of every day, you begin to get a glimpse of what it must be like to live in an autocracy of some kind. Every day in countries unfortunate enough to be ruled by a lone dictator, people are constantly subjected to the Supreme Leader’s presence, in their homes, in their workplaces, as they walk down the street. Big Brother never leaves you alone. His face bears down on you on every flickering screen. He begins to permeate your psyche and soul; he dominates every news cycle and issues pronouncements — each one shocking and destabilizing — round the clock. He delights in constantly provoking and surprising you, so that his monstrous ego can be perennially fed. And because he is also mentally unstable, forever lashing out in manic spasms of pain and anger, you live each day with some measure of trepidation. What will he come out with next? Somehow, he is never in control of himself and yet he is always in control of you.

One of the great achievements of free society in a stable democracy is that many people, for much of the time, need not think about politics at all. The president of a free country may dominate the news cycle many days — but he is not omnipresent — and because we live under the rule of law, we can afford to turn the news off at times. A free society means being free of those who rule over you — to do the things you care about, your passions, your pastimes, your loves — to exult in that blessed space where politics doesn’t intervene. In that sense, it seems to me, we already live in a country with markedly less freedom than we did a month ago. It’s less like living in a democracy than being a child trapped in a house where there is an abusive and unpredictable father, who will brook no reason, respect no counter-argument, admit no error, and always, always up the ante until catastrophe inevitably strikes. This is what I mean by the idea that we are living through an emergency.